Staff Page Revision

[Mistress of Darkness]

/me shrugs

Well that's cool. I just don't think I'll have any moTivation to submit any articles without a title. I do better when I feel like I have a responsibility. Writing until someone deigns to give me a title feels like I am trying to win a contest where the rules are undefined.

Perhaps Fell and/or Sprig could suggest a number of articles that I should submit (I'm thinking 2?), and then they could be judge my worthiness based on that?

[Spriggan]

If you want to be in the movie dept, then I'd write movie reviews.  But do what ever you feel like.  It dosen't even have to be a review, but another type of article.

I'm not saying you don't have to skill or ablility to do the job MoD.  But TWG is something that people use for refrence, and because of that all the dept heads should do things for the site.  It would diminish the value of TWG for everyone that wants to use it as a resume thing (even if you don't) if random people have random positions and others never do theirs.  

As for dept heads haveing required article submissions, we tried this when TWG first started up.  We use to have days assigned to different deparments, but the weekly requirements was too much for most of us.

Heck you can see the old article explaining the day system here

I wouldn't object to doing required monthly articles about your deparment (perfeably non review articles), but weekly is just too much a requirement for many of us.  Maybe we can have a deparment head (or editor) then one or two assistant deparment heads for the more popular areas.  Then if each of them wrote an article a month we could have one every other week.

Also why I'm thinking non-review articles is because we get a lot of reviews for some deparments, and are lacking other content on the site.  But it shouldn't be a requirement.  It may seam hypocritical, but I'm the VG and TOC head.  I cannot see myself writeing a VG article that would be original and people would care about.  But there's lots people could come up with for RPG, Table top, CCG and other deparments.  But I could come up with reviews for either of my deparment once or twice a month.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

We're back to that:
I agree, we need non-review content in addition to our review content. Writing an article that was non-review would make you a very valuable resource.

[Entsuropi]

You see MoD, i have written 13 articles to date. All reviews. Although one of them is the staff pick 1. (I worked this out by doing 2 searches and doing a poke around manually. 9 results for Entropy, one is the staff pick. 4 results for Charlie82, one is the staff pick. And my Tyranids review didn't have my name on it or something, but i know i wrote it. Incidentially, Fell, could you change all my articles so they are under my Entropy nickname?). You have written... none. Not being nasty or anything, but it has to be asked why someone with no articles to their name would get chosen over people with multiple articles. Not very fair is it? BTW, not nominating myself for film department head here, i suck at analysing films.

And you are not the only one with problems forcing themselves to write articles. I've said it before, and i'll say it again, chocolate is nice. Wait, thats not it. No, i meant to say that our real problem is that we, by the nature of the site, attract people who don't want to do real work. So all of the staff and regulars are basically lazy bums.

[Spriggan]

ok, I think I got all your name changes done (includeing your Tyranids article).

[EUOL]

I'm still waiting for Fell to add his thoughts.  Sprig made a suggestion for the staff page layout today at the gym, and I think it was a pretty good one.  I think I'll make it look more like a magazine staff page, with names and titles, then have links from those names to the specific bios.  That will allow for a more professional, easy-to-read feel for those of you who use this on resumes, but will still allow for flavorful text regarding bios.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I understand what everyone is saying. And Entropy, if we are counting staff picks, then I've written two.

All I'm trying to say is this: I don't see any point in writing a whole lot of articles with no guarantees. All anyone is saying is "Write articles if you want to be on the staff."

What I'm trying to say is, "I don't want to write articles if I'm not going to get to be a member of the staff."

The last review in the movies section was posted Sept 27 by Jeffe. Slant and he seem to be the major posters. If they want to be the Head of the Department, that's perfect. If they don't, then what's wrong with me? Besides the fact that I haven't written a full length article yet?

Like I said before, I'm willing to go through some sort of trial basis, or application process. But writing two articles and being judged on that is perferable to me to writting 13 and hoping that someone finally gets around to noticing me.

[Entsuropi]

I didn't count the staff picks article.

And we are trying to say that we need guarantees ourselves - we want active department heads who will wrote commonly. Kid kilowatt wrote an article a month, pretty much. Having someone who is unproved in the reviewing field as a department head is simply a risk that, for the people using the site as a bio, not worth it.

And you are a member of staff if you are a regular writer by default. I am a staff member, yet i have no position.

Again, not being nasty or anything here, just pointing that out.

[Fellfrosch]

Sorry guys, this is the first chance I've had all day to read the forum, or I would have chimed in earlier.

I agree that we need to update both the staff page and the staff, and I'm trying to decide how we can best separate staff and contributors. JamPaladin, for example, writes a copious amount of reviews, and yet might have no interest in being on the staff page--or maybe he does. We need to figure out who's official and who's not, and who's willing to do little odd jobs around the site (Spriggan, for example, reads the submitted VG reviews before I even get to them, and is very good about communicating with both me and the authors about which ones are good, and how to fix the rest).

Ideally, this is the type of thing that would be decided in an actual face-to-face meeting, but obviously that's not going to work.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

We could coordinate a real-time online meeting. IRC or AIM or something.

Maybe we should actually give the dept heads soem defined responsibiltiy.  Like what sprig does.

I try to read the RPG submissions as soon as I see them, and make at least formatting corrections. I could definitely be more active about communicating suggested changes.

Most importantly, though, we should acknowledge that Dept heads need to be fair. I can't reject a review just because i hate Vampire, etc. etc. Even if you disagree with the review, if it's well reasoned and written, yadda yadda...

Jeffe and JP both need to be on a contributer/staff list though. They both do a lot.

[JP Dogberry]

Yeah, thanks. I'd like to be on the staff page, but It's not terribly important, so feel free to shove me down the bottom or something. I'm not really anything other than a "Contributor"  - I write and submit stuff, but I have no real conection or responsibility on the site.  What I'm working on now is ideas for non-review articles, as well as some more reviews.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

We can't let that guy escape.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Id like to be on the staff page too....

[Spriggan]

I think anyone who's written more then one or two articles should be on the staff page.  I'm not that familiar with the publishing industry or their positions/titles.  But I do feel there's a difference between a regular contrbuter/writer and an editor.  As I stated in my first post we use to try and do lots of things, but the lack of interest in TWG from others, lack of time, shortage of people willing to do things all kept us from realy changeing TWG how we had wanted.  Now we've got lots of enthusiasm for TWG and doing articles, no small part to SE and Jeffe, so we should try and include everyone in the fairest way possible.  I still think this could be done with the larger/more popular deparments havening an assist. dept. head.  Of course that should not be so the Dept head can brush off all his duties, or that the Assist don't do anything and has his name up on the staff page.  But so that they can get all the articles done they need.  Maybe set monthly theams on what their articles (not reviews) are about, and maybe even list a call for non-review articels for the comming month with the topic being X.  Great now I'm just rambling.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

with a department head and an assistant head (and since I'm RPG head, I'd pick Jeffe as my assistant, not only are we both local, making it easier to coordinate things, but the other best candidate is JP, who just said he wasn't interested in being in a "position") you can make sure you have at least an article in your dept submitted every other week. Between Jeffe and I particularly, we' make sure there is at least one RPG article a week.

if there is an assistant dept head, then the responsibilities and things that need to get done should INCREASE. I'm not saying double in every account, but with more manpower, you can do more.